Media Slant is Contagious

Philine Widmer (), Clémentine Meraim (), Sergio Galletta () and Elliott Ash ()
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Philine Widmer: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Clémentine Meraim: ETH Zurich
Sergio Galletta: ETH Zurich
Elliott Ash: ETH Zurich

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Abstract: This paper examines the diffusion of media slant. We document the influence of Fox News Channel (FNC) on the partisan slant of local newspapers in the U.S. over the years 1995-2008. We measure the political slant of local newspapers by scaling the news article texts to Republicans' and Democrats' speeches in Congress. Using channel positioning as an instrument for viewership, we find that higher FNC viewership causes local newspapers to adopt more right-wing slant. The effect emerges gradually, only several years after FNC's introduction, mirroring the channel's growing influence on voting behavior. A main driver of the shift in newspaper slant appears to be a change in local political preferences.

Keywords: Media slant; text as data; local news markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-02
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04960158v1
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